{"id":4942,"date":"2009-09-02T11:42:49","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T17:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=4942"},"modified":"2009-09-02T11:42:49","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T17:42:49","slug":"raising-an-ethical-issue-in-the-farming-technology-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/raising-an-ethical-issue-in-the-farming-technology-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising an Ethical Issue in the Farming Technology Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/p>\n
[social_buttons]<\/p>\n
The Image above is corn growing in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
There was a scholarly article published late last year by Dr. Robert Paarlberg entitled\u00a0“The Ethics of Modern Agriculture.”<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0I would encourage anyone concerned about both the environment and about feeding people to read it. \u00a0It raises some important questions about the ethics of even well intentioned anti-technology activism.<\/p>\n Paarlberg<\/a> is a professor at Wellesley and also an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. \u00a0He has no ties to agricultural interests or technology companies, but he has spent a lot of time thinking about the ethics of opposition to technologies that could help feed the poor people of the world. \u00a0His book “Starved for Science”<\/a> is a detailed review of how the precautionary principle thinking of the rich countries (particularly in Europe) has largely kept agricultural technologies out of Africa including ones that would help feed poor people there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In his ethics paper (which is a precursor of a book that will be coming out soon), Paarlberg makes the following points (among others):<\/p>\n So why is modern farming so heavily criticised? \u00a0Paarlberg concludes that, “In\u00a0prosperous\u00a0modern societies where few people know farming first hand, citizen misunderstandings regarding the science and economics of agriculture tend to proliferate.” \u00a0<\/p>\n Paarlberg is right to approach this as an ethical issue. \u00a0It is not as if there is a purely good option and a purely bad option for how to feed the world. \u00a0There is a certain risk of unintended effects from technology adoption, but there are also negative ramifications of being overly cautious about technology adoption. \u00a0The ethical problem is that if people in rich countries drive the mistake of over-caution, it is not they who will suffer. \u00a0It will be the poor.\u00a0<\/p>\nMain Points<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
The Controversey<\/h2>\n